1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of treating nerve damage in humans.
2. Prior Art
There are a great many injuries which take place each year causing damage to various components of the nervous system. For example, there are approximately 500,000 spinal cord injuries in the United States, with an estimated 15,000 new injuries per year. Many of these injuries produce severe pain and limit movement. It is generally agreed by neurologists that the largest obstacle to movement is spasticity. The rigidity of spasticity produces massive resistance to movement, and flexor spasms as well as clonus can become a stimulus to awaken the victim in the middle of the night and can become very painful. Unfortunately, the treatment of spasticity has not been very good. The existing method consists of the administration of various drugs which may have significant adverse side effects. Neurosurgical intervention such as epidural spinal cord stimulation has met with limited success, but generally this approach is considered only as a last resort. In addition, neurosurgery in at least some instances has resulted in even more severe pain than that originally experienced by the patient. While physical therapy does offer certain advantages in that it is noninvasive, it is also time consuming, expensive and has only limited effectiveness. Yet another method is referred to as transcutaneous nerve stimulation (TNS) which has been used in the treatment of chronic and trackable pain but its use is generally limited and its effectiveness is not well documented.
Thus, prior art methods tend to be limited both in their effectiveness, and in terms of their expense, ease of application and the like. Thus, there has long existed a need for an noninvasive, nontraumatic method of treating nerve damage, especially in the central nervous system, such as due to trauma, infection, inflammation and the like.